What Dreams
by leahalexis
Summary: Sometimes, Lincoln thinks about how much worse it must be for Peter.  Set between "Wallflower" and "Back to Where You've Never Been."


There is, naturally, a video feed set up of Peter Bishop's house. More than one. One of the kitchen; one pointed at the front door. One of the stairway, the upstairs hall. The room Peter sleeps in. The bathroom, pointed at the shower. Lincoln has now seen more of Peter Bishop than he'd ever hoped to see of any man.

Peter must realize. Lincoln can't imagine they would have done things differently in Peter's world. But if his behavior has changed because of it, Lincoln hasn't been able to tell. He seems unselfconscious as he moves about his daily routine: as he cooks his eggs, as he reads the paper, as he does his pull-ups, push-ups, sit-ups. As he works on getting himself back home.

Lincoln didn't _exactly_ volunteer for this job, but he didn't say no, either, when Olivia—not Broyles—told him about it. As long as he isn't sleeping, it doesn't really matter where he doesn't sleep, or what he's doing. He's had everything on the diner menu, and gone through three books of crossword puzzles. At least this is something different: reviewing the day's tapes of Peter, just in case. It's soothing, even, watching someone go about normal daily tasks. Lincoln's own routines—arrive at his partner's house; coffee; chat with Jules and the kids; rib Robert about being late—have been so thoroughly disrupted, his day-to-day feels unrecognizable. Alien.

Sometimes, Lincoln thinks about how much worse it must be for Peter. Or should be. Would be, for him, if he were the one in Peter's shoes. (It's something Peter and Olivia have in common: they both seem, in a sense, untouchable. Above the fray—above the effects of events that lay people like Lincoln, normal people, low. Otherworldly—a word that has taken on an entirely new, even more unsettling meaning, since that day in Connecticut.) Lincoln is lost, adrift, in his own world—a new world, in that the world he lives in is not what he thought. It was new in that his life has changed so utterly, no more Hartford field office, Olivia now, Fringe Division and Boston, invisible men and God, those creepy shapeshifters—but at least this is still his world. The high school classmates whose friend requests he ignores on Facebook still send those requests; his parents know his name. He can go and have a cup of coffee with his old partner's wife. And even as much as it hurts to be reminded that Robert is gone, that hurt is a comfort—in more way than one, now that he knows what else there is to lose. Now that he's met Peter.

Peter, who—amid all of that loss—nonetheless has the capacity for compassion, for shrewd, benevolent observation. Who has the fortitude to calmly thank Lincoln for treating him "like a human being." He is steady (steady like Olivia), something Lincoln envies, so sure that his world is still out there (more sure than Lincoln is of his own), sure that he can reach it, that "his" Olivia is waiting for him there. And so he can smile while Lincoln talks, stumbling like an adolescent boy over his own awe, his idiotic crush on the woman Peter loves. Can care somehow about this Olivia without feeling ownership toward her.

It's very Zen, Lincoln supposes. Lincoln is not so Zen. Now, with the exhaustion and the distance, Lincoln is mostly just bewildered at the way his life has been turned upside down. But back then, at first, right after, he was so angry, and Peter—there's no anger in him. Small flashes of irritation, of alarm, early on, but now . . . Now there's quiet respect, for Lincoln and for Olivia; pity, and understanding, for Dr. Bishop (who Lincoln still has trouble speaking to, one on one). An infinite well of patience, and faith.

Lincoln wonders, though, about Peter's "other world"—if it exists. It's not that Lincoln understands any of this, really, he just can't help thinking—what if it _doesn't_ exist? What if Peter Bishop has no home to get back to? What if _this_ is his home—if it's the rest of them, Lincoln himself, and Olivia and Astrid and Dr. Bishop, and Broyles and everyone, that are . . . not out of place. Wrong. Altered. Not what or who they are supposed to be. Except—

This is what they are. And as much of reality's alterability as Lincoln has been forced to accept these last few weeks, _that_ is still too much for him to try and comprehend. How can reality be wrong, or right? Reality _is_. And there's a difference between finding out you were wrong, like Lincoln did, and finding out reality is. Isn't there?

More than anything else, Lincoln is wary. If Peter ever becomes less certain—becomes, like Lincoln, a Doubting Thomas, emptied of faith—then Lincoln doesn't know what that will mean for Peter's Zen. For his benevolence and generosity and cooperation, his endless patience. And for his feelings about Olivia, who, when she looks at Peter at all, looks at him the same way Lincoln does—without any emotion past curiosity, and a distant sense of pity. Without knowledge. With nothing.

Lincoln is sad for him. Peter Bishop, at least, is one person Lincoln is very glad not to be.


End file.
